Monday, 25 September 2017

According to Leading Clever People by Rob Goffee & Gareth Jones "If clever people have one defining characteristic, it is that they do not want to be led"Well that is how I feel about my role in the EOUC Short Talks at Oracle Open World.This year we have:

It may seem that it is an easy job, get a few people to talk about something they know inside out, create a few slides and then the fun of keeping them to time on the day.It isn't. I send a survey out and ask if they want to speak and to confirm this slot doesn't give them a ticket to OOW, they have to be attending anyway and that they will provide the slides on time.This is when the definition of an EMEA speaker gets tested, I have had "I'm an honour member of such and such user group" from American ACEs. I guess it shows how much people want to be part of this, but I have to weed them out.Then I start on scheduling and accepting, and at this point you can guarantee someone appears from the woodwork and says they didn't see the survey or some other excuse. I want to be all inclusive so I try hard. Once I tell them they are in I give a deadline to get the presentations in and this year everyone made it on time, the first year ever I have not had to publicly name and same. Dr Frank Munz was last but even he had 61 minutes to spare! Julien Dontcheff was first.

In previous years I have suggested no more than 10 slides, they only have 5-6 minutes, but that caused me no end of problems so I just ask them to remember that. Lonneke Dikmans won this challenge she only had 4 slides but Oren Nakdimon has 26!

Then the size of the files, some love pictures, there are a couple of Gifs and a video. Again not surprisingly Lonneke has the smallest file but Frank has a whopping 31.4 MB, and 3 are over 10 MB.

I did send them a sample slide for their first one, to introduce themselves. Funny how many didn't manage that, including Heli Helskyaho who has been doing this for years. No excuses Heli.Then there are those who insist on their own layout, which means I have to copy their master into my consolidated deck. Yes I have to consolidate them or we wouldn't get through the presentation on time. It has to be slick.One set of slides that were excellent however used a non standard font so didn't work on my PC. Why did that very clever presenter not think of that? So now I have 2 slide decks and hopefully on the day it will work. I have another projector for the countdown clock and with Ralf at my side as the most experienced timekeeper let's hope it all goes well.Hope to see you there.

Sunday, 17 September 2017

I think this is something like my 14th consecutive Oracle Open World coming up and yes, it will be busy but also very different.

Change is good, but there is a lot of change this year and I'm a little nervous and yet also excited.

The ACE program has changed over the last 12 months, but they are still sponsoring those speaking at OOW. Thank you OTN or should I say Developer Community for your continued support.

I fly out to HQ on the Tuesday and even the hotel has changed it name! The Sofitel has been renamed the Pullman. Same chain just a reclassification.

Wednesday is the User Experience Strategy Day, one I always look forward to, learning what they are up to next.

The ACE program has had 2 days of briefings, traditionally the Thursday and Friday but this year it is split into the Dev Champions on Thursday and ACE on Friday. That means I have Thursday free but lots of people to catch up with in development for my day job.

We all move into the city Friday night and the main event kicks off.

I haven't got plans for Saturday yet, I love to cycle the bridge but not sure if i will this year, but there is still time.

Saturday evening there is the Partner Network (OPN) first reception and there is a new partner program this year that rewards implementations rather than sales, which is much more what we do at Certus, so an important program for us.

Sunday is traditionally User Group Day, (after a quick run over the bridge) and we are still there although Oracle have brought in competition in the form of journey to cloud sessions.The EOUC, or EMEA usergroups have a great program and this includes my traditional short talks from the EMEA ACEs and the new EMEA Dev Champions.

Then I have to run over to the OPN keynote, some partner hospitality and then off to the ACE Dinner.

Monday kicks off with the bay swim. The OAUX Exchange is the highlight for UX at OOW and a User Group Lunch and then the Oracle Womens' Leadership event which I am very privileged to be invited to. This VIP event is very thought provoking. I also hope to make it across to Oak table World but that may need to be Tuesday.

Monday evening is either the world's biggest pub crawl or simply the night when everybody has a reception. I have many invites and will make a decision closer to the time. I tend to accept most invites to receptions and not worry if I don't attend, unless it specifically said limited numbers. For a dinner I am more careful and will let the hosts know if things change. That is only good manners.

Tuesday is a quieter but still very busy day. It kicks off very early with an Analyst dinner then a number of meetings. At the moment I have nothing planned for the evening but know that will change!

Wednesday I have a UX Lunch and a usergroup focus group on how partners work for customers and then the Certus Presentation with DHL. Delivering People Excellence for DHL Moscone South 206 at 17:30 the last session of the day, just before the appreciation party. Normally Thursday morning would be the hardest session at OOW but this year there are mainly learning sessions Thursday, no case studies so I think this is the worst session time! Please come along and support us, it is a great story. I am so proud that every year we have a customer come with us to share their implementation project.

Quick visit to the bloggers meetup, and it's off to the party.

Thursday I hope to catch up with a few meetings and then its time to wind down. I would have planned to fly home Thursday if I had known it was to be such a quiet conference day, another change to the traditional but hopefully all these changes will make it even more exciting.

Oh, and I have selected a few sessions in the catalogue, well actually more than just a few but whether I have time to actually attend any is another thing. I do have a tip here though. The session catalogue will populate your diary with those you registered for, but it won't let you schedule overlaps. It does however let you mark others as favourites. When you have done that print out the session numbers and use this clever little apex app from Connor McDonald and using those numbers populate your calendar with your backup sessions. Then if the session is cancelled or not what you expected your next choice is to hand. But if you are foreign like me, set your PC / Mac to PST time first.

Lots of friends to catch up with, customers to host, meetings to attend. Sessions to deliver and if I'm lucky to attend. Just writing this blog has me exhausted but I know it will be fun.

2015 and we did it again, this time with no break between the sessions we moved up to 16 speakers. More than 12 on 12c.

Then last year it was fully a tradition and we asked the speakers to pick their favourite feature of the database and they didn't disappoint, 22 stepped up to the plate.Since last year Oracle, the ACE program and OOW has moved some of its priorities and as well as the very visible priority of Cloud, Code is also been given a lot more exposure. OTN who manage the ACE Program have recently launched another program of Dev Champions, so this year we are splitting the EOUC talks into ACE and Dev.The ACE Quick Fire Talks has 8 speakers with 5 minutes each.

Friday, 1 September 2017

My last post 'Mind the Gap' talked about that marketing to adoption process. And this year I think for me it will be Blockchain.

Remember when every presentation on Cloud, or Big Data or Digital started with a definition? Well expect that, and in the run up to OOW I have been reading lots of articles so I at least arrive semi educated.

Wikipedia says 'A blockchain facilitates secure online transactions.A blockchain is a decentralized and distributed digital ledger that is used to record transactions across many computers so that the record cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks and the collusion of the network'

It is all conjecture at the moment what oracle are going to do, but the signs are there and I know people in development who have been 'busy on new initiatives' and now the schedule is published it is pretty clear something is coming. TechTarget commented on this last week.

I'm getting ready for Oracle Open World, what do I need to do? What do I need to Learn? Where do I need to be? Who do I need to see?Every day, every hour my mailbox has another invite or marketing email, and the diary is getting busier and busier. I love OOW, it is about Oracle showing their roadmap, and marketing their current portfolio. As a partner I want to be part of that current portfolio message, and am pleased that this year I will be part of the DHL story; but just as important is understanding the roadmap.My role as Alliance Director means I need to understand all new initiatives in Oracle and determine if they will have a use in what we do at Certus. Then I need to keep an eye on them from the first marketing, until the time they are adopted by customers and make sure we partner, learn and invest at the right time. The problem is, we never know how long that gap will be.As a user group leader it is even more difficult, we can't deliver content in everything Oracle are talking about but we do need to keep people informed, and then understand the adoption pattern as it emerges.Think about existing, mature products, like the database or E Business Suite. Development talk about the innovation they will bring to the next release for about a year before the release notes start to appear, and then after release, we see early adopters and many theoretical sessions before adoption starts to become mainstream. It can take several years between release and half the customer base adopting.For my world, the SaaS, the Fusion applications took almost 7 years from Idea to Release, and several years before there was more than just a handful of users, but roll forward 5 years and we have many, many customers and a significant number who have renewed their 3 year subscriptions. The Gap from marketing to adoption was wide, but it has been a great journey and I personally have loved it. AM loving it, the favourite part of my job is talking to customers, understanding where they are now and then helping them create their strategy to move to where they need to be. Then I love to share that collective insight with user group members.A more recent example of this is #PaaS4SaaS. I have been talking about this since Oracle first started their journey about 4 years ago. At Certus we stated early on how important this would be for SaaS customers. We got educated, we selected our partner eProseed, we worked with development and UX and OPN. Adoption has been slow, for new products, rather than just the next release of technology, part of this 'gap' is recognising use cases., but they are here now and we have several projects in progress. I am particularly enjoying the Low Code part of #PaaS4SaaS.So what will be the new messages at this OOW, and which gap will I be minding next? ...............

Tuesday, 22 August 2017

User Group Sunday is a much loved kick off to the magic that is Oracle Open World.

Usergroups are given sessions to fill and for the whole of Europe, Middle East and Africa we only get 16 sessions, which doesn't really do justice to all the amazing speakers we have in the region. So 4 years ago a idea was hatched to try and showcase as many as possible by having a couple of quick fire short talk sessions, a bit like TED Talks on the database.

This has been a really successful tradition, 2014, 2015, 2016 and so what do we have planned for 2017?

The ACE program is still thriving and many of us will be in Redwood Shores at the briefings on the Friday before but there is also a new kid in town the Developer Champions. So our intention is to have a session for ACEs and another for the Developer Champions to share with us why they have been given this title and how it makes their work shine.

When Certus was born in 2012, the intent was to be a Cloud Applications partner. A new product, a new company, a new partnership and above all a new community of customers.

Their first year with UKOUG PYA gave them silver for Cloud and it was a great start but even better they got Gold for training. In 2013 there were hardly any Cloud customers and a lot of the work they did was training for and on behalf of Oracle. In fact when I joined in 2014 the first thing I did was deliver partner UX training for the partner enablement group.

The following year they won gold in both categories as their reputation grew and customers started to share their Certus stories. I remember hearing Lavendon talk at a UKOUG event before I joined.

The PYA portfolio grew and in 2015 there were a couple of new categories, we entered the emerging technology category to showcase what we had done with #PaaS4SaaS and won silver, again Certus stepped up early and deserved this. By then we were doing less training and our silver award reflected this. Another new category was SME PYA, most Oracle Cloud customers had been SME, and the shared stories from JT Group at UKOUG, Oracle UK and Open World events helped us to win this.

Last year it was almost an embarrassment of riches, England Rugby, ONS and Save the Children all talking about how Certus had delivered for them. It was great to win our third straight Cloud PYA award. #PaaS4SaaS gave us another Gold, and a third in the new category of digital transformation, helped by the very public ONS advocacy.

Quite a surprise this year was to be given an Oracle UK Partner Award for HCM Cloud. A surprise because in the past Oracle awards were often linked to sales and Certus haven't traditionally been a reseller. But as Oracle have realised Cloud is about successful implementations and happy customers, we were really proud to be recognised this way.

It has been an incredibly busy but fun year in Certus, numbers are up again and there are so many people having fun with so many different clients and projects. They work hard, and it would be amazing if again, you would vote for Certus and the team that deserve these awards so much.

The awards this year are slightly different. Cloud is divided into the pillars and we have been shortlisted for both HCM & ERP. In the last 12 months we have had 3 of our own customers go live with combined HCM & ERP, ONS, HMT & England Rugby. We have assisted with several other projects and delivered more HCM implementations. These are the two awards that mean the most to us. We work with Oracle through development and testing, this year R12 beta testing was big investment for us, and then we deliver the results of that investment to our customers.

Training is a funny one, we don't deliver direct training outside of projects today, but we do deliver training to customer support teams, in many cases so they can continue the rollout of their phased implementations themselves. This knowledge sharing approach was key to ONS as they shared in this Oracle Scene article and what DHL will be talking about at Oracle Open World. The transformation from on premise to Cloud is something support teams worry will lose them their jobs. We believe it gives them more opportunities.

And the #PaaS4SaaS machine marches on, as we start to adopt the low code Application Builder Cloud Service I helped to launch at OOW last year, and through initiatives like the Digital Mission we ran jointly with Oracle for central government last month which again I hope to share more details with at OOW and UKOUG.

Working for Certus is fun, I love it, and the people here deserve your vote.

Someone asked me if Certus do so well in the UKOUG Partner Awards because I am on the board. I have to say the reverse is probably true. I have nothing to do with selecting the nominations, in fact as a partner I am allowed nothing to do with the process at all. My boss asks me if we are being shortlisted and I'm not convinced he believes me when I say I don't know. Voting is then overseen scrupulously again by no partner volunteers.

Only customers can vote, but if you are one of our own customers, or have been impressed with the case stories we and our customers have shared, then please vote.

Sunday, 9 July 2017

KSCOPE is an event I love, and an event I go to, to learn. Membership of ODTUG is something I choose to pay personally. It
covers the technology behind the Cloud applications , and whilst we don’t have access
to it, I want and need to knowhow it
works. This year KSCOPE was in San Antonia in the JW Marriott resort.

As in previous years I have signed up before the agenda is
ready, and although I wasn’t presenting this year, I was asked to facilitate a
discussion on the value of user groups. The agenda when launched talked about
the development tech being merged with the database but in reality there was
not a lot of my content.

However having booked my ticket and knowing how much fun it
would be I still went. I didn’t need to have worried; it was excellent.

Danny Bryant

At the beginning of June, Danny Bryant and Opal Alapat, the conference
organisers asked me to get involved in a little game they were playing. On the
first evening they were organising a geek meet, and the idea was 4 community
leads would prepare a very short but very technical presentation in their area
and then they would draw lots to see which one they had to present. Danny and
Opal wanted to throw in a curved ball and add a fifth; me. So whilst I didn’t
present a PaaS4SaaS presentation I did write one. Keeping it a secret was the
hard bit.

One of the things I love about Kscope is the community
service day, held the day before the conference, where they try hard to give back to the place where it is held. This year was Haven for Hope, a campus for the homeless. Please read
about it it is an amazing facility, the largest of its kind in the US. Almost
70 ODTUGers take part and my group painted the railings at the security hut. It
was hot and humid but we did have shade. I was very impressed that the colour
we painted was a great match to my nail polish. I was painting in a group with MariaColgan and we laughed all day.

In the evening was the geek game night and the secret was
killing me. The 4 geeks were Edward Roske - EPM, Bjorn Rost - Database, Stuart Bryson -Business Analytics and Scott Spendolini -APEX. The first guy up Bjorn had my
deck. He was really good, but by then Edward Roske had introduced a shot of
bourbon between each of the 5 slides . I hope someone taped the event, as it
was really funny. Once they had my deck, they were convinced Stuart had written
it. By the time it came to reveal myself, there had been a lot of drinking, and
I was worried for about 30 seconds I would be expected to drink, when Danny
offered to do my turns. I didn’t score very well, I think they got upset when I
said OBIEE was like Discoverer.

Monday the main sessions started and I signed up to be
ambassador for the sessions I really wanted to see. Over the three days I
attended a number of Essbase and ePBCS newbie sessions, which have given me the
insight I need for Financial customers. Essbase is baked into the application
andmore and more customers are buying
ePBCS.I spoke to a lot of the partners in this area to understand how they
approach these offerings.

The project management session was really well attended for
a last minute addition to the agenda. The panel was made up of Ron Moore, TopDown Consulting, Jessica Cordova, ArcEPM, Kent Graziano, Snowflake Computing and Rhonda Brigham, Starbucks.Whilst the discussion was good, the
outcome was good project management hasn’t changed. The tasks may be different,
but planning and communication are still the most important. I loved the
discussion about meetings / emails; what is enough without being too much?

Alex sporting his ears

One of the sessions I was ambassador for was Alex Nuijten on
12c for Developers. Alex went on to win the best Database presentation. well one
Alex and I am sure not letting people out of the room until they completed their feedback sheets had nothing to do with you winning.Or perhaps it was his Mickey Mouse ears? The ears were to advertise that t

I was also ambassador for Shay Shmeltzer the PM for #PaaS4SaaS ABCS. Yet again more functionality has been added and this time I learnt more about using the native phone features for mobile apps, something I will be trying out straight away. This was the only ABCS session but well attended and made me think even more about the culling of the middleware track.

The panel on the Importance of User Groups was made up of Natalie Delamar - President ODTUG, Mike Reily - secretary and Past President, Danny Bryant - Conference Chair and Jennifer Nicholson - OTN ACE Program. The discussion was around connecting, sharing stories, learning
from oracle and volunteering, gain confidence, improve ability, personal and
professional success. There is no limit to what people have achieved.

KSCOPE also has a 5km race, which Maria and I decided to walk. Maria had a session to deliver at 8.30am so we tried to start early, but it was a properly timed race and they wouldn't let us, so we had to walk a slightly different route and covered only 3 km, but did see the main race set off. We later found out they had a 2.5km route and official walk; wish it had been advertised. Still we got to see the dawn, a few deer and a rabbit, but not the threatened skunk which I was not sorry about. Jaz Ribeiro from the UK won the ladies race at her first ever KSCOPE, well done Jaz.

Jennifer Nicholson from OTN along with Lori Lorusso looked after us ACEs, with a dinner; a great chance to catch up with all our friends in the program. There were a few new ACEs and promotions, most notably for me Danny Bryant got ACE Director which was announced in the plenary session and Alan Arentsen made ACE. Well done to all.

KSCOPE always throws a good party but this was their 20th birthday so they went right out. I love the fact you get to dress up but this year there were 4 different themes and it was hard to choose. There was a beach theme were we were encouraged to bring out the white clothes from the Miami Beach Party a few years back and I was tempted but there was also a masquerade ball theme and any excuse for a long dress. So I combined the mauve wig from the beach party with my party frock and mask. Most people one who I was, but I did catch Darlene (Tim Tow's wife) out. Loved it. However I am getting old and was home at a reasonable time.

My WIT table

KSCOPE celebrate Women in IT with a lunch discussion and i was proud to be a facilitator. This year they had 'Dear Alice' questions for each table to discus. On my table I had 2 gentleman which was refreshing and our question was 'I am one of two architects on a project, with 6 developers, all men. Whenever they have a question they ask my male peer. He often refers them to me, when I am the best to answer but how do I get them to come to me first?' The discussion was about confidence, empathy and encouragement, and ways for her to demonstrate her ability and openness. There was quite a debate about cultures, geographical, age and religious, but everyone agreed it is possible. KSCOPE also launched a WIT magazine, to share stories and encourage.

The Alamo - San Antonio

UKOUG TECH16

Once the conference was over, I had a chance to do some whistlestop tourism and joined Alex Nuijten, Alan Arentsen and Roel Hartman for a trip downtown. Alan impressed me with his UKOUG Tech16 bag.

The two main attractions of San Antonio are The Alamo and The River Walk. It was far too hot and I simply overheated, but thanks to lots of water and rests I survived; just. Most people complain they sweat too much in the heat, but I simply don't which means I overheat, that combined with not being the fittest of old ladies means I really should know better.

But it was a great afternoon, topped off with cooling down in the infinity pool back at the resort. A special thanks to Marc Sewtz for this amazing photo.

Then all too soon it was time to go home. I met up with Alan at the airport for a last lunch and a chance opportunity to say goodbye to Natalie and Danny. My first flight was to Chicago and had been rescheduled for an hour later which left me with 84 minutes to make my London flight in another terminal. Previous experiences of Chicago have not been good for me or my luggage, however British Airways who partner with American, had a shuttle bus from their domestic terminal to the international, and even better we didn't go landslide so there was no security to go through. Amazing, thank you, well done. The only sad thing was they had JUST stopped serving bacon butties in the lounge at Heathrow but it wasn't the end of the world, and I was home by 3pm.

Natalie said in the 'Value of User Groups' session that KSCOPE was a conference to be an experience' and it was. Excellent as always. Thank you.

Friday, 14 April 2017

I didn't attend Collaborate as UKOUG but I am always representing them.As I said in my main Collab blog, I met up with up with James Jeynes the UKOUG Executive Director at the airport. We have a stand at Collaborate, which James manned on his own. Kerry, the UKOUG head of sales was meant to also attend but unfortunately she has to cancel as she was unwell. Without Kerry, James had very few give aways on the stand, and was very busy but he did a great job, talking to many exhibitors and delegates about UKOUG.We had a number of meetings whilst we were there:We meet with the DOAG directors attending, there is an EMEA Presidents' meeting in June and so it was a great chance to catch up and talk about what is important to us.James also got to meet Jeremy Whyte , Senior Director, Global User Group Management at Oracle when we met with him as a courtesy.Along with two of the UKOUG JD Edwards' committee who were also attending Collaborate we met with the Lyle Ekdahl and his team to discuss how we could deliver the best experience for our JDE Members at conference this year.I also attended a session with Cliff Godwin for partners that talked about E Business Suite. I don't implement EBS any more but went along as a user group leader to understand what is and more importantly unpick the myths around EBS. I truly believe that user groups should be officially recognised as partners, it would mean we would get local briefings on all things Oracle, in a simple way.Finally we met up with Quest, to understand their new initiative OC² , for those customers who have moved to SaaS cloud. We talked about how we can work together and deliver for UKOUG cloud members as well. What I got from Collaborate was a long list of things to follow up, and James clocked up many 1,000s of steps and was immersed in the world of Oracle User Groups.The three user groups that make up Collaborate, IOUG, OAUG and Quest all made us feel very welcome. Thank you for your hospitality.